Forward error correction (FEC) concatenated codes are used today in many facets of optical, satellite, and wireless communications systems as well as other systems like storage and SAN networks. Multi-dimensional codes are used today to increase the Net Effective Coding Gain (NECG) at the network termination point at the expense of hardware and system complexity at these points. The present state-of-the-art uses concatenated codes and other similar approaches to strictly increase coding gain at each termination point at the expense of added complexity. In certain optical network architectures, particularly access and metro oriented optical networks, and more specifically single hop regenerative metro and datacenter networks where optical-electrical-optical (OEO) conversion occurs at each node or network element (NE), limiting electronic functionality at these NEs becomes paramount to limit cost, power consumption, and footprint. A network architect can breakdown the NE a bit more and draw a distinction between an NE that requires client add/drop capability (some percentage of the overall bandwidth added/dropped to customer(s)), and NEs that do not, i.e. expressed traffic. In practice, most nodes end up being a hybrid, requiring both functions, network express and client add/drop. Similarly, in certain electrical circuit configurations such as ones that transmit signals across long electrical connections (i.e. backplanes, cables, etc. . . . ), a distinction can be drawn between circuits that originate and terminate data and ones that simply express it through.
However, increasing NECG, as is done with these FEC codes, results in increased cost, power, and space. It would be advantageous to continue to obtain the NECG provided by these FEC codes for the complete client to client connection, but to minimize the impact on increased cost, power, and space, especially at NEs with expressed traffic or the like.